Private Space Investigators - Devlog #1 : Procedural Space Stations

Introduction

Hello and welcome to a new project that I am working on as a solo dev, this is a game I've had in the back of my mind for a little while now. With the increase in coop horror games capturing the viral space over the past few years with games such as Phasmophobia, Lethal Company and REPO, I decided I would take a swing at a similar idea.

In a nutshell this game is a coop horror investigation game, where players are tasked with entering derelict spaceships and space stations after a SOS call has come in, players will have to investigate what has happened to the crew while dealing with whatever alien threat may still be lurking around. This game is taking some of the investigation elements of Phasmo but also dealing with the threat while salvaging parts of the ship that can be used to keep the company afloat.

Current Progress

I have been working on this for about a month in my evenings when I have the time and I have currently been focusing on the initial system of generating space stations. In the current iteration, each room has an "entrance" and various "exits". I use quotation marks here as visually they are no different and simply serve as connection points, the system chooses a random exit to attach a new room to by the entrance. It takes into account several factors, checking for overlap with other rooms, checking to see if the new room is compatible to connect to - this means if its the same type of room (Residential, Engineering, etc.) or if it's a transition room that allows a new room type to be placed.

Next Steps

From here I will be taking a break from the station generation system, with the exception of fixing transition rooms and adding events to spawn items in each room. I will be focusing on the core game loop of finding items in the station and also completing objectives to escape the station, at this point the alien will act more as an immovable obstacle so that I can work on the balance of cat and mouse fighting between the player and the AI. This will mean refining the AI state tree and allowing for more complex behaviour.

I will also spend this time implementing the networking side of the game as this needs to be implemented earlier than later so I can avoid backtracking too much, this should not be too difficult as I implemented this to a workable extent with my other project.